The climate change hysteria is finally over.

How Narrative Replaced Nature for Policy Control.

It’s hard to get away from it, really. Everywhere you look, everyone you talk to, every media group, every politician, has been shilling fear porn since before 2000. Anyone daring to go against the flow is viciously beaten back into place or expelled from the group.  I’ve only really seen this kind of conformity in one other place, and that’s a cult. I’m sure climate deniers and climate cultists alike would rather soil their pants before changing their minds on this. While I believe in climate change, I don’t believe it is anything near the existential threat it’s made out to be.

How do I know this? Well, I once used to drink the climate Kool-Aid, and gallon upon gallon of it, too. I was a conservationist and wildlife photographer from an early age, having been born and raised in Southern Africa. I quickly joined the ranks of environmentalists and was very active at protests, spreading the word about the dire state the planet is in, so it was easy to get swept up in the climate hysteria, which I proudly did at the time.

In late 2006, after watching Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, I decided to write a type of Climate Change for Dummies book, so I set about researching any and all data and opinion pieces I could get my hands on. Twelve months in, I was struggling, not with the data itself, but with what everyone was saying. I spent another six months trying to find out what I was missing or doing wrong. It could only have been me, right? I was about to shelve the project when I had a conversation with someone close to me, explaining what had happened up to that point. He simply said that maybe the data or the people who were analysing it could be wrong. I had thought about it, but surely if the science was wrong, why was it that all we could hear in any climate debate was “the science is settled”?

I got back down to work on my notes from a different angle. Soon, it became clear that the climate data and the climate narrative didn’t align at all, and the gap widened over time. The science wasn’t settled at all. We were being fed only a small portion of the picture, and the only reason I could fathom was that those spreading the narrative wanted us to live in fear. Scared people will always want a hero to save them and will believe anything to avoid feeling fear again.

The 4-Billion-Year Perspective: Earth’s Natural Cycles

So, what was the key fact that turned me over to the contrarian dark side?  There were many things, but the main point I talk to people about, or get them to think about, is simply the timescale. As humans, we can’t grasp large numbers, whether they’re distances, temperatures, large amounts of currency or time, because we have an average lifespan of about seventy-five to eighty years, so we cannot imagine anything larger.

Think of the Earth as some ancient living, breathing organism. For 4.3 billion years, it’s had a “pulse,” or a series of massive, natural cycles that have seen the planet go from a snowball Earth to a hothouse Earth where lush jungles reached all the way up to the poles.

Geologists, geochemists, palaeoclimatologists, amongst others, study deep time spanning hundreds of thousands to billions of years in the past. In that context, we’re actually in a relatively cold period right now. Many will tell you that we’re in an interglacial period within a larger ice age. It’s also obvious from their work that much of the Earth’s history had no permanent ice at the poles at all. We keep being told that the ice is melting or that the regions will be ice-free, and this is framed as some sin modern man has inflicted on the planet. In the grander scheme of things, it’s just the Earth returning to its more common ice-free state.

Yes, sea levels will rise over the next few hundred years, but we have plenty of time to adapt as a species. They have been rising and falling long before humans ever lit a fire or emitted any carbon. One of the deliberate cons of this failing narrative is that we’ve been taught to believe the snapshot of the last hundred years as a crisis. That’s like looking at a single frame of a two-hour movie and then claiming to know the whole plot.

The Model Mismatch: Why the “Worst Case” Isn’t Reality

Let’s talk a little bit about the whole “existential threat” you hear all over the news, and from the leaders who are dancing to the tune of the globalist elite. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, was formed on the back of a scientific conference established to monitor rising greenhouse gas levels, where scientists called for a global convention to limit CO_2. The original group was called the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases (AGGG). It was purely a scientific group that wanted to influence policy around the world. G7 countries (especially the USA) got nervous because they didn’t want independent scientists controlling the global policy narrative. The IPCC was created to replace the independent scientists with an intergovernmental process, and not just to look at climate science, but to manage it.

“The U.S. government saw the creation of the IPCC as a way to prevent activism… from controlling the policy agenda.” — Bill Nitze, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State

We all focus on the words ‘Climate Change’ in the IPCC, but forget the first word that signals a unified government panel producing policy to coordinate the consensus machine. This wasn’t a natural evolution of atmospheric physics in the community, instead, it was a political pivot because the elite realised that if they didn’t control the climate narrative, it might be used against them. Single governments could now, via a summary of rules approval process, veto or edit scientific conclusions in the IPCC reports before the public ever saw them. Science should be about the search for truth, not consensus. When I learned about the history of the IPCC, I stepped away from the growing cult,

Putting aside the world of political control and influence, let’s discuss all this talk of an “existential threat” you see everywhere in the news and on social media. Most of this has been constructed from the IPCC models, which weren’t actually climate models themselves, rather input scenarios to see what might happen to temperatures. The more I dug into the topic, the more I realised that they could have been designed as a menu of options for governments. The models started out as what-if scenarios and over the years became a “standardised” set of data that could be used to establish the social cost of carbon, i.e. the higher the perceived cost to humanity, the more money could be printed and spent on saving the planet.

All this “science-driven policy” comes from the IPCC’s RCP 8.5 model (Representative Concentration Pathways), the absolute worst case that was meant to be an extreme outlier, a “what if” scenario that assumed we’d basically burn all the coal on the planet and stop all technological progress before 2100. It became the NorthStar policy that allowed the UN or WEF to say things like “If we don’t pass ‘Policy X,’ we will end up on the RCP 8.5 track.”

But here’s the kicker. Even though the data now shows we are likely on the lowest possible warming path (RCP model), politicians and the media still use that 8.5 “disaster” model to justify their policies. Why? Because fear sells. This failure of scientific correction shows that scientists and university departments are either knowingly complicit or being paid to stay on message. There are many vilified voices out there, so expand your thinking by including some of them to offset the doom. One of those you can check out is Professor Judith Curry, who has spent years pointing to what she calls the “Uncertainty Monster.” She argues that the climate is so complex—affected by everything from clouds to ocean currents—that these 100-year computer models are essentially guesses dressed up as gospel. It seems like we’ve been guided away from the science of uncertainty and into a narrative of “settled” doom.

CO₂: The “Villain” That’s Actually a Life-Giver

Something that shows me how little the everyday man and woman know about climate change is their understanding of CO₂. We’ve been told that this component that man emits is going to kill us all unless we stop burning stuff.  We’ve been conditioned to think of CO₂ as a toxic pollutant, and so we’re kept from understanding just how vital it is for our existence.

The first hurdle appears to be a major misunderstanding about the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere today. When I ask friends or colleagues what they estimate the number to be, the results vary from 20% to 70% of the atmosphere. True, they are not scientists, but it shows just how brainwashed humans have become about this villainous CO₂ that must be stopped at all costs. The true number is as low as 0.0422% of the atmosphere, or 422 ppm (parts per million). We’re constantly told that this is the red line number of crisis, but again, as I’ve highlighted about the whole Cult of Climatism, you’re being fed a small frame of the movie and told to trust the governments who claim to know the end plot.

Through this article, I hope you develop an understanding of the deep-time knowledge of carbon cycles going back millions of years that we have collected, yet we’re focused on the snapshot fallacy of the past century, which is politically expedient for keeping a society on edge.

During the last glacial period, CO₂ levels dropped to around 180ppm. That is near the “death zone” for plants at 150 ppm, and if it had dropped much lower, photosynthesis would have stopped, and life on Earth would have ended.

The extra CO₂ we’ve added is actually causing a “Global Greening.” NASA satellite data shows more leaf area across the planet today than 20 years ago. CO₂ isn’t the villain, it’s plant food. The idea that we need to destroy our economies and enter “Net Zero” poverty to fight a gas that makes the world greener is a narrative that’s starting to crumble under its own weight.

We’re currently at about 430ppm, which is higher than it was in 1850, before we really ramped up our industrial endeavours. Now compare this to the CO₂ history of the planet, especially when fantastic dinosaurs walked and lived on the earth, at levels between 1,000 and 2,000 ppm, when the planet was a vibrant, green paradise of life. In that timeline of a floor being 150ppm and the ceiling being 2000ppm, are we in a climate emergency? No, we are not.

Now, Kool-Aid drinkers will point out that the rapid increases during the past century are way faster than the natural cycles (like the Milankovitch cycles) that operate over tens of thousands of years. They are, of course, correct in this, because the change in CO₂ we’ve seen in such a short period of time could be thought of as a car going from 0 to 60 in a second rather than over a mile. This spike, while concerning, is not existential. Of course, this doesn’t take into account that we’re not hapless plants from the Jurassic. We are a technological species that can build, move, and innovate faster than the climate can shift. They will also say this is not about the biology of being a plant food, but about the physics of it being a blanket that traps heat. Now, no one is saying that it isn’t a greenhouse gas that can trap heat, but the sheer nature of the “uncertainty monster” means that we struggle (cannot agree) to know how sensitive our climate is to it. Is it a thick blanket or a thin sheet? If the climate is less sensitive than the models claim (which the lower RCP model data suggests), then the “blanket” isn’t going to smother us at all.

The Cult of Climatism: Fear as a Tool

While scientists bicker about a few parts per million here and there, the consensus policy machine has been pumping out the “Climate Emergency”, which has become a modern secular religion. It has its “prophets” like Al Gore, whose 20-year-old doomsday predictions haven’t come true and its “sins” like your insidious carbon footprint to hold up to the public. We’re told we need to all reduce our footprints, unless you’re a celebrity climate champion or a billionaire philanthropist who doesn’t burn carbon while jetting all over the planet to lecture us.

The most tragic part of all of this? We’re scaring the life out of our young people with policy based on control, not science. Dr Matthew Wielicki often speaks about the psychological damage this causes to future generations. We have a generation of teenagers who are genuinely afraid to have families or plan for a future because they believe the falsehoods that their world will be a fireball by 2050.

This narrative serves a purpose for groups like the WEF (World Economic Forum) and the UN (United Nations) because it justifies the massive centralisation of power and wealth by dismantling the cheap, reliable energy economy we’ve relied on by using hydrocarbons during the industrial period. It’s a very clear definition of a top-down solution looking for a problem. When you realise that the fear is the product of our leaders, the narrative starts to lose its power over you.

All of this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t live a cleaner life from an energy perspective. So many great steps have been taken in your modern world to slow the spike in emissions, but again, it’s not the time to lose your head or emotions over past emissions or the continued need for hydrocarbons. 80% of the energy consumed today comes from hydrocarbons. We have spent trillions over the past ten years on renewable initiatives and moved the needle by one or two per cent away from the market dominance of hydrocarbons. 2030 targets are already being pushed back as people realise we cannot transition in time, because the majority of renewable systems are growing and scaling too slowly.

A New Blueprint: Adaptation, Not Panic

So, what’s the alternative to hunkering down and waiting for the world to end? Do we just ignore the planet? Of course not, but we need a concerted shift in your thinking and solutions as we move from panic to adaptation.

• Energy Realism: We need hydrocarbons even more right now to keep the lights on and the hospitals running while we transition to the only real heavy-hitter in renewables, nuclear. It’s obvious that any country cutting hydrocarbon energy security too early will face massive economic and lifestyle downturns. Just look at countries like the UK and Germany that stopped generating their own energy and now rely on imports. Nuclear Power will be vital, but it will take some years to get up and running. Wind is very wasteful and not really viable unless subsidised by the government, which has other pressing financial issues. Solar is a great free resource, but we cannot run our economies on it at the moment because of storage limitations. Much more money needs to be invested in solar, since the sun is a monster fusion reactor in the sky, but we can’t convert it on a large scale yet. The massive lean into AI is also going to syphon off more from the grids as the race to AGI continues, but maybe an energy solution will come from physics models down the line.
• Oil and gas, sadly, need to stay because it is the only way we can transition and grow into our renewable world. There is simply no switch to instantly go from one to the other. Those countries, like the UK, that stopped exploration and drilling will suffer massively, as they need to import large amounts of hydrocarbons to keep their economies growing. Wind and solar cannot pick up the slack now.
• Human Ingenuity: We have AI now and are pretty advanced in engineering fields to start building long-term projects to safeguard against the inevitable cycle of sea level rise. If these levels rise a few inches over the next century, we can build better sea walls, just as the Dutch have for a hundred years. We can also start developing inland cities that offer great opportunities, rather than focusing on the great cities that will be the first to flood, like London, New York, and Sydney.
• Resilience: Instead of trying to “stop” the climate (which we can’t do, so get used to that), we focus on making our societies wealthier and more resilient so we can handle whatever the Earth’s natural cycles throw at us.
• Climate science: Wrestle climate science away from bureaucrats and totalitarian institutions (the UN and WEF) and back to truth-seeking scientists who love debating amongst themselves in the pursuit of truth, not global consensus. We can also remove activist donor billionaires who shape academia for their own ends and wealth creation.

The Final Word: Take Heart

The “Climate Narrative” is losing its grip because people are waking up to the fact that the math doesn’t add up, and the predictions haven’t been coming true. We aren’t heading for an apocalypse; we’re just part of a long, natural story that’s been playing out for billions of years. You don’t have to live in fear. We are capable of being adaptable, innovative, and hopeful from now on.

The publication, Nature, recently retracted a high-profile study on future global economic challenges and needs. I won’t go into all the reasons here, but for them to pull such a study is a major thing, as it shows that fellow academics seem to be breaking ranks when it comes to accepting fear science simply because of a publisher’s merit. The major point worth mentioning about this retraction was that the global projections were based on studies of data from just one country: Uzbekistan, and it turned out they hadn’t recorded their economic data that well either.

Let’s be honest here. In recent times in the world of academic science, going against the grain isn’t just difficult; it’s often a professional suicide. Here’s the thing about Dr Judith Curry, whom I mentioned earlier, she isn’t a “denier” in the way the media often paints her.  She’s a heavy-hitter with the credentials to back it up, which is exactly why her “heretic” status is so significant to show us the morally bankrupt nature of so much of our sciences.

If you’re looking to verify her credibility, start with the understanding that she didn’t start on the fringes. She was the Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, and has published over 180 papers. She was an insider who began to see “cracks in the foundation” of how the science was being presented to the public. Long may her voice (amongst so many others) continue to value scientific truth over crowd rhetoric. She has long said that, with all the uncertainty, there is no silver-bullet solution here, and that framing it as an emergency oversimplifies the issue. I think her philosophy is that we should stop trying to control the climate and start focusing on building resilience in our world.

“Man-made climate change is not an existential threat in the 21st century.⁷ The perception of a near-term apocalypse has narrowed our policy options.” — Dr Judith Curry

We live on an incredible planet and are a pretty adaptive species that grows through challenges and problems. Our plans for the future have to change because, to the best of our understanding, most hydrocarbons are finite. We need to push the innovation envelope, finding ways to fuel humanity’s progress over the next 10 to 20 years, and we won’t get there if we huddle around listening to men and women who want us cowering and begging to be rescued.

Lift your head from the cowering masses and start your journey of truth-seeking. Hell, try writing a book about any topic in crisis. Knowledge and learning will set you free.